Arizona weekly enterprise., 1887-11-26
THE cAPUcHlN BROTHERS.

Their queer Ornaments Made of Human
 Bones-skeleton of Dead Brother.
 The Capuchin brother, attired in his long habit of coarse brown frieze, his waist encircled by a hernpen rope, his stockingless feet bound in sandals, his un- trimmed beard and shorn head bare, ex- cept for a diminutive scull cap, is a familiar sight on the streets in Rome, which he patiently traverses, carrying an earthen pitcher as a receptacle, while he begs aims from house to house.
 There is a peculiarly stolid expression on the faces of these men, as though everything human, or, at all events, everything bordering on the highest attri- butes of humanity, had been stamped out of their nature, leaving a mere machine an unwashed one at that.
 The Church of the Fraternity is in the piazza of the same name. ill the imme- diate vicinity of the Piazza Barberini. It was founded by Cardinal Barberini, brother of Pope Urban VIII, in 1624- same cardinal who was the friend of Milton when he visited the Eternal City in 1888. The church contains the tomb of the founder and many remarkable treasures of art, including the magnifl- cent painting by Guido. representing | Michael the Archangel trampling the devil-the latter portrait of Pope Inno- cent X, for whom the painter seems to 1 have had an inveterate hatred.
 Passing through the church few steps to the right will lead you to as ghastly and at the same time as grotesqueiy hor- rible a spectacle as the most morbid searcher after flesh creeping experiences can possibly desire. A series of four connected small apartments, the floors of which are made of earth, said to have been carried from Jerusa- lem, contain the horrors I speak of. The wall and ceiling are liber- ally decorated with ornamental devices constructed by cunning workmen out oi human bones. The bones of the verte. bra, wrists and ankles are arranged so as to describe circles and curves. Thest figures are intersperscd here and there with skulls, femms and humerus, tibias fbulas, ulnas and radius.
 The same horrid ornaments are ar ranged around the person of a deceased brother, who appears suspended agains the middle of a wall, incased in tn coarse brown cloth, the garment he lived died and was buried in. The dried ski clinging to the face of the skeleton grin in horrible mockery as the living brother his former companion in the flesh, con ducts you around this decorated charne house. He looks as though he chuckle over the fact of having been release from the grave below to give place to brother more recently defunct, for it the rule of the fraternity-who are con pelled to make a small burial groun meet the requirements of the order when death takes place to dig up tn longest inferred to make room for h successor.
 There is a quality in the earth en ployed that has the effect of preventin . decay of the body, drying it up mummy fashion, and preserving the hai presenting far more horrible effect tha if bleached bones were presented view.
 There is a weird uncanniness abo this strange mixture of the living ar dead, the latter divested of solemnity environment of ornamental osteolog while the air of the survivor seems ton, down to m unnatural sepulchralness- sort of half way condition between Ii and the tomb.-Rome Cor. San Francis , 1 Chronicle,